


lux aeterna

by himbostratus



Category: Ancient History RPF, Julius Caesar - Shakespeare, Rome (TV 2005)
Genre: Afterlife, Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, More like an ambiguous ending, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 09:20:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18775384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/himbostratus/pseuds/himbostratus
Summary: in death, what truly matters?





	lux aeterna

[He ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdlBBvpRXxsovQKn5X2S5FA)walks along a field of wheat. The tall stalks shimmer silver as a slight breeze, neither warm nor cool, makes them lean side to side, like waves on the mild seas. The sky is an apathetic blue, not quite overcast, with an invisible sun. Antony thinks he has been here once before, perhaps as a boy,  perhaps as a man ; the memory echoes in his mind, too present to be ignored, but too faint for the source to be found.

The road stretches on forever, wheelmarks dug into the ground to show that, perhaps, there are others around. It winds and curves and forks, all leading to places with no name, places that don’t mean anything. Antony thinks that these things mattered once before, perhaps when he was a boy, perhaps when he was a man ; the memory echoes in his mind, too present to be ignored, but too faint for the source to be found. He shivers with deja vu.

A hill sticks up from the bland terrain. The slope is gentle, but clearly distinct from the flat expanses of golden wheat, and leads into a wood to the north. A willow tree sits at the very hilltop, shrugging its shoulders in sadness along with the breeze. A figure sits beneath it, dark against the landscape, almost shivering in the distance like a mirage in the sands of Egypt. For a moment, Antony thinks that it might be the ghost of a woman he once loved, but she has been buried in the style of her people, and he in his, and perhaps their bodies are together, but whatever is left is an eternity between them.

He cannot tell how long it takes him to rise the hilltop. A young man lays in the splotchy grass. His face has the whispers of stress lines carved in it, but they are lax and disused. His dark hair has grown out, and Antony thinks it looks good. His body is stretched out, albeit conservatively, as if he is still conscious of himself in an undefined plane of emptiness. A purple cloak is about his shoulders and pulled around to serve as part of a blanket, the hem of which he clutches in his hands. Antony’s shadow crosses him and his brown eyes open. Antony knows him instantly in that moment.

He opens his mouth to say his name, but his breath catches. The man stands, gazing upon Antony with a look that mirrors his own, eyes saturated in surprise and remembrance, glassy with sadness. They embrace each other tentatively, scared of everything that has kept them from this, as if they did not once know each other as they know themselves. Antony’s grip is loose with something like disbelief, perhaps his own distress settling poorly in his heart. Still, there is comfort to be found, that which he has not known since he was a youth. It overwhelms him. Here Antony stands, flicked off of the world like any other man, standing on a hill in a field, knowing only what it is to hold and be held. Wherever the world is, does it still turn? Does this world? The other man is the first to pull away, just like he always did, but his hands linger on Antony’s arms for just a moment.

He follows Antony’s gaze to the fine purple cloak about his shoulders. “This is yours, isn’t it?” He asks quietly, even as he already seems to know the answer. “Here,” he begins to shrug it off. Antony steps to him suddenly. With the nervous hands of a new lover, he takes the cloak and pulls it back onto his shoulders, smoothing it over his upper arms, grasping them firmly to make sure that he is real.

“Keep it,” he says, “purple suits you.” They are suspended in a long moment of silence counted by the sigh of the wind and the forlorn gaze shared between them. Antony has not forgotten what led him here, to this moment, to this place, this afterlife, and he’s sure that the man knows as well. “Where are we?”

“I’m not quite sure ; I don’t think it matters.”

“Then what does?”

“Just that we’re here,” the man says, and he smiles like he once did.

**Author's Note:**

> i have so many finals / term papers i should be working on but i wanted to make myself feel weird. follow me on [ tumblr](https://www.babybrutus.tumblr.com)


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